Freeze Your Camera, Get Better High ISO?

Freezing your camera apparently gives you better high ISO. That’s what one user is claiming to say on 4Chan’s /p/ thread. Apparently the user stuck his Sony A350 in the freezer and got better results at ISO 3200. More on this after the jump.

Pretty crazy now, isn’t it? ISO 3200 is the highest the A350 can go. For the pixel peepers to reference, here is DPReview’s charts on ISO 3200 with the A350. By all means though, freeze your camera at your own risk. It would be interesting to see the results with one of the tough point and shoot cameras made though.

This could possibly be just a troll, however not many people have seemingly tried this.

This is basic physics with a little kitchen-approach to solutions. The noise in the digital sensor is a direct product of stray particles (mostly electrons) in the sensor. Freezing the sensor (like is routinely done in pro astronomy as mentionned by Richard Seiling) is a good way to reduce the sensor noise.

However, the first obstacle you’ll find when freezing a whole camera is that some of the electronics (and the LCD) may stop working until the temperature goes up again. So, don’t go too low.